james_hague's comments

james_hague | 5 years ago | on: Robot Game: Comparing 6502 C, Assembly, and Forth

When I used to write games in 6502 assembly, I'd use a more native style rather than modeling the code after a high-level language. For example, I'd maintain global settings instead of passing lots of parameters, often having these live across many function calls. I wouldn't pass more parameters than fit in A/X/Y. The main loop was sometimes a big run of inline code instead of having many routines that only get called once. And so on.

Nice project! Looks like it was fun to work on.

james_hague | 8 years ago | on: A Comprehensive Super Mario Bros. Disassembly

Not platformers I realize, but lots of outer space games with actual acceleration/velocity calculations preceded SMB. Off the top of my head: Lunar Lander (1979), Asteroids (1979), Defender (1981), Gravitar (1982), Sinistar (1982). Just want to keep the history straight. Several of these modeled gravity as well.

james_hague | 9 years ago | on: Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? (1978) [pdf]

I'm quoting a citation-free sentence from Wikipedia (ugh), but it sums up what I've always heard: "this paper did less to garner interest in the FP language than to spark research into functional programming in general."

james_hague | 11 years ago | on: The Secret Life of Vector Generators (2001)

If you want a more personal take on building vector games at Atari, Memories of a Vector World (1998) is a good companion piece:

http://www.siggraph.org/publications/newsletter/v32n2/contri...

(Disclosure: I was Guest Editor of the issue of SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics that this appeared in.)

james_hague | 11 years ago | on: You Should Write Blogs (2005)

I started blogging into the void almost exactly seven years ago. No promotion. No trying to be controversial. No plan. What I didn't expect was the effect that reddit, Hacker News, and eventually Twitter would have. They're essentially content discovery services, and I am grateful that all three exist.

james_hague | 11 years ago | on: J Has the Best Development Environment (2009)

I'd like to clarify that I was using J6.02 for Windows when I wrote that. You can still download it from jsoftware.com.

Since then the priority has been for J to be platform independent, but it's resulted in some big steps backward for beauty and usability. That's for the environment only--not the language.

james_hague | 11 years ago | on: My history with Forth and stack machines (2010)

Every time this article crops up I stop and read the whole thing, word for word. Not only does he nail the beauty of and fundamental trouble with Forth, but it's a deep ramble through a world in the way that the best New Yorker pieces are.

james_hague | 11 years ago | on: My iOS Indie-Game Numbers

The App Store is EXTREMELY clogged on the low-end. If it's your first game, if you use "puzzle" to describe it, if it's a spin on Tetris or Threes or Snake or match-3 or anything well-known, if someone could clone it in a week...that's the low-end. Not only will you have trouble getting customers to notice you, but you'll also fight just to get any kind of review.

What's also happening is that developers (myself included: http://appstore.com/daisypop) think "Wow, I shouldn't have spent so much time on that; I need to make something simpler and more rapidly so I have a better chance of turning a profit." This accelerates the problem.